Seth groaned, slowly lifting up her hand in order to attempt to put it on her head. She tried to lift herself up, but a piercing pain came through her ankle. She couldn't see, she was blind, how could she know what it was? She slowly started to lift her leg up to try and regain mobility, only for her to hear squelching and more pain coming from her ankle. She could really only guess that something had pierced through her ankle, possibly a spike or something else. Her breathing slowly became more shallow as reality began to sink in. She was alone, she was injured, and she was blind. The cold seeped in next, creeping through her clothes and into her bones as she lay there, shaking. She tried to listen instead, counting the sound of her own breathing, the distant hush of wind, anything that might tell her where she was or if anyone was nearby. There was nothing. Just the steady reminder of her own heartbeat and the pain anchoring her in place.
She stayed there longer than she meant to. Not because she wanted to. It was because moving felt impossible. Every breath hurt. Every small shift reminded her of what her body could no longer do the way it used to. The cold pressed in around her, patient, waiting. But staying meant dying. That thought cut through the haze. Seth planted her palms into the ground, fingers slipping against snow and stone as she tried to push herself upright. Her arms shook violently, barely able to hold her weight. The moment she lifted herself even an inch, pain flared again, sharp enough to make her vision swim, pointless, empty darkness swirling behind her eye. She collapsed back down with a strained sound, chest heaving. "No," she muttered, the word raw. "No- I can’t-"
She didn’t finish the thought.
Instead, she shifted her focus. If she couldn’t stand, she’d crawl. If she couldn’t crawl, she’d drag herself. Anything was better than staying where she was.
Her hands searched blindly, scraping over rock until her fingers found something solid. An edge, a ledge, a rough surface she could grip. She pulled herself forward inch by inch, ignoring the way her body screamed in protest. Each movement was deliberate, slow, like she was learning how to exist all over again.
At some point, the ground angled upward. The cliff.
Her breath caught. She tilted her head back as if she could somehow sense how high it went, how far she’d fallen. There was no way to know. No way to see. Just the cold stone rising in front of her, indifferent and endless. She pressed her forehead against it, shaking. "I can do this," she whispered. She didn’t believe it, but she said it anyway. Her fingers climbed first, searching for cracks, for anything that felt like it might hold. She tested each grip carefully, shifting her weight with painful slowness. When her footing slipped, she froze, clinging desperately until her breathing steadied again.
Time lost meaning as she climbed.
There was only the stone beneath her hands, the ache in her muscles, and the burning insistence in her chest that she had to keep going. She didn’t think about how far she had left. She didn’t think about what would happen if she fell again. She just moved. Up. Grip. Pull. Breathe. Her body trembled with exhaustion, arms threatening to give out, but she forced herself onward anyway, scraping, climbing, surviving through sheer stubborn refusal to let go.
She was blind. She was broken. She was terrified. And still, she climbed.
The ground stopped sloping. Seth didn’t realize she’d reached the top at first. She crawled forward another step, then another, until her hands met open space instead of stone. She froze, breath hitching, heart hammering as the truth slowly settled in. There was nowhere else to climb. She had made it. Her arms gave out and she collapsed forward, pressing her face into the snow as her chest rose and fell in uneven gasps. The cold burned, but she welcomed it. It meant she was still here. Still breathing. She dragged herself, before she felt someone. A cheek.
"Artemis?" Her throat felt raw, like the name had scraped its way out of her. She reached forward, hands shaking, fingers searching blindly through the snow. “Mom?” Her palm touched fabric. Warm. Still. Relief surged through her so fast it hurt. She scrambled forward, hands tracing familiar shapes. An arm, a shoulder, the curve of a body she knew better than her own. Then she stopped.
Something was wrong. Too still. Too quiet. Her hands moved faster now, panic bleeding in as she searched for movement, for breath, for anything. She pressed her ear against Artemis’s chest, listening desperately for a heartbeat that never came. "No," she whispered. "No. no, no, no-" Her fingers brushed against Artemis’s face. The corruption was unmistakable even without sight. The wrongness clung to her skin, heavy and cold, like something that should never have existed had settled there and refused to leave.
Artemis was gone. Seth curled in on herself with a broken sound, forehead pressed against her mother’s shoulder as her body shook. She had climbed all this way. She had survived for this. "I can’t see," she choked out, words tumbling over each other. "I can’t see- I don’t know where I am- I don’t know how to leave-" Her hands clenched into Artemis’s clothing, knuckles white. She didn’t know who she was begging. Artemis. The world. Something listening. "I need you," she whispered. "Please."
Her fingers drifted upward, trembling as they brushed against Artemis’s face again. She paused when she felt it. The only thing that still felt right. Whole. Untouched. Her eye.
Understanding didn’t come gently. It came like a sentence being passed. "I’m sorry," Seth said, voice barely there. Not to excuse herself. Not to justify it. Just to acknowledge what she was about to do. When she pulled away, nothing changed. The darkness didn’t lift. The world stayed black.
Seth gasped, clutching at herself as realization hit. It hadn’t worked. She was still blind. Still lost. Still alone. She folded over, pressing her forehead into the snow beside Artemis’s body, sobbing silently as the cold crept closer and the weight of what she had done settled in her chest.
Artemis was dead. And Seth would carry her eye without ever seeing the world it was meant to show her.
